Quito: Assange a victim of persecution

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange must be allowed to go free from the Ecuadorian embassy in London following a UN panel ruling calling for that, the South American country's foreign minister says.

"What more do they want to be accused of before they start to rectify their error?" Ricardo Patino told regional broadcaster Telesur on Friday (local time), in reference to Britain and Sweden.

Assange, a computer hacker who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, has been holed up in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid a rape investigation in Sweden.

Saying Assange was a victim of "evident political persecution," Patino added Ecuador was analysing its next steps in the legal and diplomatic arena.